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Tuesday, 25 October 2022

David d'Angers's veterans

 

During his stay in Saint-Florent for the inauguration of the monument to Bonchamps in 1825, David d'Angers made a series of sketches of veterans of the Grande-Armée d'Anjou who had gathered for the occasion. His original album of 1825, Portraits de Vendéens par David d'Angers, is preserved in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Angers. The Archives de la Vendée website tells us he planned to create a series of bas-relief, but, if so, the project was never begun.  Each of the 62 drawings is carefully annotated with biographical details, either by  David himself, or in a second hand, probably that of his former drawing master Jean-Jacques Delusse (1758-1833). The result is a rare visual record of a passing generation. 


On view in the church at Saint-Florent

David, it seems, had no political agenda. He was moved by the emotion of the occasion and by his empathy for these tough proud old men.  His interest in the fashionable science of physiognomy underlay his desire to record their features.  According to Victor Pavie, the men responded readily, crowding to his door, eager to share their reminiscences. Years later, Pavie tried to explain how David, a man of convinced Republican views, had come to feel drawn to the veterans:

The Vendean peasants who gathered around the tomb in Saint-Florent in 1825 constituted a people.  David understood this.  As a child from a different school, almost a soldier from another camp,  he could not embrace the Vendée in all its radiant unity - the sanctity of the cause, the martyred devotion.  But he recognised generous and worthy opponents of  Kléber and Marceau. The era of the War in the Vendée was coloured for him with the same Homeric prestige that Gros's brush had lent to the battles of the Empire, but with the resonance of religion and home.  He preferred to call his native province by the name "Vendée". Two days at Saint-Florent, under a sun which lit up the wide vistas and splendid serenity of his homeland, sufficed to bring him in intimate contact with the survivors of the Grand Army.  These brave men posed and chatted to him with a frankness which was both noble and familiar.  Not one aspect  escaped him.  To see him so keen to record with the same crayon, their stories and their features,  they would easily have mistaken him for a partisan - he was indeed an unreserved  admirer of their pride in combat and simplicity in glory.
Oration of M. Victor Pavie, for the inauguration of the bust of David, Angers, 12th March 1863

References

 A complete set of photographs was published by his biographer, Henry Jouin, as long ago as 1902:
Cent portraits dessinés par David d'Angers, text by Henri Jouin (1905) - "Les Vendéens"
https://archive.org/details/gri_33125006413096/page/n95/mode/2up

The the Archives de la Vendée holds a set of 25 photographs of the album. The catalogue  includes high quality images. 

 In 2006, for the bicentenary of David's death, Pierre Leroy, of the Souvenir Vendéen revisited the original album and new photographs were taken by the author of the blog "Clemenceau du Petit Moulin".  The results are available on the website of Les cousins de la Marquise, a society for genealogical research centred on the region between Nantes and Angers


"Les véterans des guerres de Vendée: 62 portraits dessinés par David d'Angers", Les cousins de la Marquise [genealogical website], 2005

See also: "David d'Angers et les Vendéens d'Anjou, 1825",  Clemenceau du Petit Moulin [blog] post of 16.12.2010  

Local History Group of La Chapelle St Florent, Les Vendéens de la Chapelle St Florent dessinés par David d'Angers
https://docplayer.fr/84380857-Les-vendeens-de-la-chapelle-st-florent-dessines-par-david-d-angers.html


Here is a small selection of David's images:



These three men were some of the earliest insurgents, identified by David  among those who "sought out" Bonchamps in March 1793: Left: René-Guillaume Michel, aged 55, from Saint-Florent, iron smith and former lieutenant.  Centre: Julien Suzineau, native of Saint-Herblon.  Right:  Paul-Jacques Thareau, aged 75, from Saint-Quentin-en-Mauges, first sergeant of M. de Bonchamps.  


Pierre Pohu, farm worker, native of Saint-Florent. Cavalryman; made captain in 1815. 


Etienne-Mathurin Péneau, aged 64, nicknamed "La Ruine", a weaver, from Cholet.  Former Drum-Major in the Vendean Army.  Péneau had been a regular soldier before the Revolution:  a grenadier in the Regiment of Poitou, then  sergeant in the Regiment of Armagnac.  I am not sure whether this military pedigree accounts for his magnificent pigtails!

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Two weather-beaten fishermen from Varades who served in the Breton companies of Bonchamps's army:  Left: Mathurin Cosneau, aged 68,  nicknamed "Trompe-la-Mort", from the many times he had escaped peril



Some of the combattants had been very young men. Left: René Guinehut, wool spinner, aged 49, from the commune of Drain, to the west of Saint-Florent, standard-bearer in the Army of Anjou.   Guinehut was born in August 1777 and therefore turned 16 in 1793.  Centre:  Pierre Deniau, a tailor, aged only 43.  Deniau participated in later stages of the war and was a lieutenant during the Hundred-Days

Right:  Louis Chateignier, farm labourer, aged 44.  
The annotation on David's portrait reads:
 Of the army of Bonchamp.  On the retreat from Le Mans, he was taken prisoner with his brother and both were shot. His brother was killed outright but he received a ball through the cheek and was able to feign death; he remaining completely still for several hours, then made his escape into the undergrowth.  
Henry Jouin thought David must have been mistaken, since this man was surely too young to have participated in the conflict at Le Mans. However, subsequent research has confirmed his identity.
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Louis Chateignier [or Chataignier] was born at La Chapelle-Saint-Florent on 5th November 1780. He would therefore have been just 12 years and 4 months old when hostilities began. Two Chateignier brothers, Julien and Louis, are recorded as taking part in the Virée de galerne.  Julien, the elder, would have been 19 and therefore liable for conscription. The abbé Félix Deniau in his Histoire de la Vendée confirms that farmers in the Le Mans region sheltered Louis after his brush with death.   A request for a pension in 1824, states that he had "an enormous scar on his cheek from a gun wound" as well as a crushed hand and bayonet wounds. Chateignier signed the document with a cross. 


Here are some of the final witnesses to the death of Bonchamps:


René Bellion, aged 58 and his brother Jean Bellion, aged 55. From fishermen from Varades and former soldiers in the Breton companies.

The Bellion brothers owned the cottage at  La Meilleraie  where Bonchamps  died.  David writes of René that he "crossed the Loire with general Bonchamps, who was mortally wounded, and carried him personally to his tomb". Of his brother Jean: "It was at his house that general Bonchamp died, and he carried him to the cemetery". 



Michel Chataigner, aged 68, charcutier, born in Saint-Florent and former sergeant in the Army of Anjou.  "He was present at the last moments of the general.  It was in his arms that he took his last breath". 





David includes the two priests who ministered to the dying Bonchamps:


Left: Mathurin Joseph Martin, curé of Montrevault, former intendant in the Army of Bonchamps. a  he abbé  Simon-René-Aubin  Courgeon de la Pannière, curé of La Chapelle-Saint-Florent.  The abbé Courgeon "ministered to general Bonchamps at his last moments, in the village of La Meilleriae en Brittany, 18th October 1793"

Louis Pavie records that the comte de Bouillé, David and their party dined with the abbé Courgeon on 26th or 27th June. It was probably on this occasion that David sketched his likeness, together with that of Mme de Bouillé .  Courgeon related how he had heard Bonchamps's confession and administered the last rites, but in fact been too overcome to remain at his deathbed to the end. 
Louis Pavie, Voyage à Saint-Florent et La Chapelle, le vingt-cinq juin 1825
https://commulysse.angers.fr/ark:/54380/a011506952106xfj18Z/4a8f5a1e01



Louis Rabjeau, aged 67, stone mason, from Saint-Florent.  Former sergeant with the Chasseurs in the division of Beaupréau.  During the Hundred Days, he volunteered with his four sons for service in the Royalist cause.

It was Rabjeau who in 1825 formally sealed Bonchamps remains inside the commemorative monument.




 Jean Burgevin. aged 58, former soldier of the Vendée.

Not all Vendean soldiers were paragons of honour.  In his article in L’Almanach du peuple for 1851, David wrote:

I saw at Saint-Florent a man whom his comrades approached only with horror, since they recalled that this wretch had dragged out the wives and children of patriots to massacre them at their doors.  He had often struck down defenceless women on the thresholds of their homes and amused himself afterwards by slashing them with his sabre.  It was with profound repulsion that I drew the portrait of this immoderate brute, whose cowardice and fanaticism were to be read in his features.  I recorded him as a phrenological and physiognomic study. (mediapart.fr)

This man is tentatively identified as Burgevin:

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